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Thursday, 4 March 2010

HOW DO YOU THANK a far-scattered myriad of people? A quite staggering many have each given individual, heartfelt, warm and honest pieces of themselves to me over these last weeks in the forms of words and poems, stories and help and love. And I am touched. Truly, I find it quite astounding how much good you stranger-friends have shown me though you have never met me. Saying thank you seems inadequate, but I mean it. Your thoughts and warmth have encouraged me and shown me chinks of many other lives, all being lived somewhere else, all as full of tribulation and inspiration as mine, I can see why this place is called the web. Some years ago I read a tale set in an Anglo-Saxon pagan England and it told of a shaman's apprentice and otherworldly visions of every single thing being held together by spidersilk. Every thing, animate and inanimate, tree and stone and book and person and crow, all linked by a thread, a thread the shamans could travel up, and a thread through which vibrations of others could be sensed. This ancient view of things is common amongst shamanic cultures worldwide I think; it somehow feels true. The book was The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates and it is based on a thousand year old Lacnunga Manuscript held in the British Library.

And the warmth has not come only from far off; here in my new village I have experienced the kindness of true friendship, and the generosity of a community that is becoming very dear to me. People have helped with practical box-lugging and emotional box-lugging. And it has caused me to ruminate on the importance of neighbourhood. Though solitude is solace, spidersilks attached a little way out from your lair are good.

Speaking of lairs, mine has been getting to know me slowly .. this house has been here a long time longer than me, and there are stories in the walls I am sure. I feel like each day I have nested and arranged and unpacked and boiled the kettle and sat painting, I wafted metaphorical Rima into the house as others have done before me, and the walls are sniffing me to see what they think.

House magic is so interesting, and I love stirring that particular cauldron. Puppets and bells and paintings have been hung and rugs thrown, books stacked and arrangements arranged. But most of all postcards have been strewn. Everywhere I have lived there've been millions of postcards on the walls, dogeared and beautiful, some of them I remember being stuck to my bedroom wall as a youngster, generations of blutack knobbled at each corner. They are like little windows, inspirations, eye-feasts, mini-masterpieces.

It is vital for me to get a place to a certain point of comfort before I can sit down and work in it. So for a week or two I busied and busied and the nesting will continue, I am nowhere near done.It is cosy and peaceful. But it is strange. I have gone from a tiny truck space to a whole house, with stairs.

I used to have to walk just two paces from desk to kettle, now there is a whole hallway and two rooms between those two places. I miss the sound of the rain on the roof, the rain doesn't leak in these days in a downpour, but because the roof is so far above my head I don't even hear it. I lay in bed the other night expecting the house to sway when a log lorry went past. But it didn't.

The house is stuck to the ground good and proper. It feels heavy and permanent, and the world feels further away. But these granite walls are grown in a beautiful place, I just have to walk down the road a bit to find nature and so I did...

Half way up the stairs there is a window where you can just see past the village edge to fields beyond.

There have been February snow flurries and there are crocuses and snowdrops in the churchyard. Every so often a day with a hint of spring in its step comes along. I took one of these and headed off up a hill. From this hill you could see that winter had headed off too... round the corner of the world to the antipodes who will have their turn soon.

Up on those hills I clambered into fields and watched sheep who watched me. The view was delightful. And the air smelt of newness and damp clouds.

The sheep knew it was spring too..

While the sheep watched me I sat and looked over the fields below and thought the thoughts I always think at the beginning of a new season. The smells of a new spring remind me of last spring and many springs before that. Seasons turning make me nostalgic and forward-looking at the same time. I decided I loved the outdoors so much I was going to take some of it home with me so that it wouldn't be far off any more. There was a pile of tree trimmings, all wrapped in ivy wood, which had little flags of sheep wool tufted onto the twigs. I prized off a few branches and carried them off with me...

..wrapped in an old chain that I found buried in the ground. At first I thought it was some sort of giant worm cast.

I climbed along the hedgerows in the lowering sun...

In the next field I met some cows who walked over to where I sat. There is something eminently peaceful about cows. They approached me in their grass-stamping wet-nosed way, mothers going before their calves in case I was dangerous. And I sat with them all around me tall and steaming, cow hulks, brown-eyed, interested and indifferent.

I loved them and the dusk came and made them into snorting silhouettes.

And so I took my bundle of sticks and stumbled downhill again, this time taking a different route that wasn't really a path, and so it wrapped me up in brambles and sunk my boots in squelch.There were steep woods and yellow gorse. A few times I fell and got caught on fences, cursing the heavy chain-and-sticks that I was stubbornly lugging all the way.

At one point a whole flock of sheep followed me expectantly as I walked through their field. No doubt I had come at dinnertime. I walked on past their sheep-shelter, and somehow ended up alongside an overgrown woodland stream, ducking under hoops of growth, slightly lost, and thinking about a cup of tea.

At last I returned home triumphant and bramble-scarred, with that invigorated puff in my lungs that comes from clambering.

And with those far-hefted ivy twigs and some leafy handmade paper and a bit of wire and string, I made a woodland lampshade! There are bare lightbulbs all through the house, as you may have seen.. (I must say that having electricity is a luxury in itself, as is hot water straight from the tap!) ..but the bare bulbs needed dressing, and so here is how I brought the outdoors in:

It makes a lovely light, but I think its branches might need trimming a little, for the prevention of accidental blindings.

And what about painting? Well I have been busy, two clocks and a commission have been completed, and I will show you those soon. But for now a couple of pieces I have made for the sake of painting.First a strange stained glass design, depicting not church imagery, but Finnish saga. It is painted with oils on cardboard, a new experiment which I am not wholly sure about.. I like the way the paint dries quickly and enables you to make a scrubby translucent surface (which reminded me of coloured glass, hence the addition of black lead lines later).

This is Väinämöinen - old sage of the Finnish epic poem the Kalevala. A while back I heard an interesting programme on radio 4 about the Kalevala and it mentioned a point in the story where Väinämöinen sings a ship into existence. I found this such a lovely image that I decided I should paint it. Here is the stained glass Väinämöinen, I am not sure what I think of the final piece, but it was an interesting hexperiment.

And would you like to hear how he sings? I have loved listening lately to the sound of a Finnish folk instrument the jouhikko - a horse hair bowed lyre.Here is Jouhiorkesteri playing Mina Mina Poiga Nuori. This is the sound I imagine coming from my painting.

~~~

And the second painting, inspired by words in a Dylan Thomas poem:

Love in the Asylumby Dylan Thomas

A stranger has comeTo share my room in the house not right in the head,A girl mad as birds

Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.Strait in the mazed bedShe deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds

Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,At large as the dead,Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.

She has come possessedWho admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,Possessed by the skies

She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dustYet raves at her willOn the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.

And taken by light in her arms at long and dear lastI may without failSuffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.

Here she is this lunatic girl. The birds I have hidden beneath her skirt after a dream I had where I was harbouring injured animals of various sorts under my skirts.She is made with pencil and then watercolour, is only about 6 inches tall, and I think I rather like her.

My desk these days looks out onto the oldest building in the village, a Bishop's house. In the mornings I sit with my coffee watching the humourous strutting crows hopping about on the roof pecking at the thatch.

There are many interesting projects approaching and paintings and clocks to be made, so I will be painting my brushes bristleless as March wears on. I have had to write lists to keep all the stuff tethered in my flippety brain somehow.

And I will be here again before too long to show you more things. I hope this lengthy epistle makes up for the tumbleweed blowing past here of late.Meanwhile I will continue magpieing and feathering my nest. I will sit on mornings and evenings and think on the turning of things and the returning of springs. I hope I'll be able to see some blossom from a window when it comes.

In my living room there is a heavy dark old wooden door, with a latch, and either side of it stand two wooden upright beams. They are very beautiful. That door leads to the front door which leads to an even heavier old oak door. I wonder about all the people who have gone through it. Their comings and goings, their days and ruminations, and sorrows and mundanities. Lives cross in many different ways. Sharing an old old house with long dead people is interesting, and I'm not talking about ghosts. I mean the real people, their real lives, all our real lives. They all are connected by the spidersilk, because they have all been here at one time, or maybe at many times. Here, lifting latches, coughing, loving, sleeping, sweeping, chopping carrots, wondering, grieving, leaving, and coming home again, in out of the rain falling from the same sky.Is time linear or cyclical? When they stepped out of my front door, where did they go next? What story did that set in motion? and what was born of that which was born of that?

144 comments:

Beautiful thank you.Wonderful home and exciting place to live.Have to be so careful with these spaces to do the right thing by the house, it's history and people.Here in the Antipodes we are awaiting the arrival of Winter.Autumn is beginning to make it's presence known in peaceful, still days and a hint of colour.The opening rains are next we hope and then the green will arrive, changing our brown hills for the next three seasons.Winter is eagerly looked forward to.Good wishes in your new home.....

woohoo! she's back! your journey into the brambles seems more than symbolic...especially as the end resulted in lamps ;) more brightness to you, and ~welcome home~ (oh yes, and there's another concept of time that is not linear or cyclical, but =all current=, meaning past, present and future reside in the same moment. i think you may know of this in your new house :)

Yay, you're back! Must rush now, but I will savour this beautiful tale with a cup of tea when my other half has finished with the computer! Your little house looks gorgeous, I hope you feel you've come home, and a little less sad!

Hello, I am so glad for you that you are settling into your new home. From the photos you shared it looks like such a wonderful fit. Such an old house. Here in Oregon USA we have no houses so old. I love reading your words and seeing your photos. Your title reminded me of some books I read by Robin Hobb. It is a trilogy called The Live Ship Traders you might enjoy. I hope you continue to get comfortable in your new direction. I'll be following along.Jan

Oh, Rima, I'm thrilled that you're back and settling in your new home. It is so beautiful, and I love your jaunts through the countryside (especially with the cows who seem keenly interested in strangers). I can see why you have moved there. I would love to live in Dartmoor one day, too.

Your painting of Vainamoinen is stunning. I love it! I hope you will sell prints of it on Etsy.

Boy, I have used the word "love" a lot in this comment--but I can't help it. Oh, well.

I hope that you have many wonderful and story-filled years in Dartmoor.

What a lovely post, leaving me so much to think about! And I so enjoyed the photos of your new abode. It seems like the perfect house for you and you have already outfitted it beautifully. My best wishes to you, and I am looking forward to reading more from you as you settle in.

Rima,I am so glad you are back. I have been missing your posts! Welcome to your new home. It looks really cozy and homey! We got 60 inches of snow last week so I think spring is still in hiding, but the temperature is above freezing, so one can hope.Erin :)

Rima, you are brave. That front door signifies more than lives lived...it signifies your brave spirit going through it.... A lovely home you are making and now I can continue with mine. Thank you. Amy - The Happy Peasant

Oh Rima, words can't express the deep longing in my heart set in motion by your words, your pictures, the music, your art.... something in the thirsty caverns of my soul that is never fully quenched.... and maybe that is a good thing, somehow. I'm glad to see you are nesting, a tender bird safe under the skirts of the Mother.

A house that doesn't sway ... not everyone knows to appreciate that! I hope you will bloom here, like the gorse. Wonderful feeling, and looking out on the fields and the bishop's house! Very nice. The Mad Girl is a great drawing/painting. Thanks for taking us on such a wonderful visit. Love the cows and sheep! And the creek!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for continuing your musings and sharing your beautiful place in the universe. I so look forward to looking through your eyes and seeing a path I haven't chosen, but simply dream of visiting.You are a true poet.

Dear Rima, what a lovely surprise to find you here in blogland again. I have looked for you all week as something told me we would see you here again soon. Your new paintings are wonderful and I enjoyed traveling through the countryside with you. We are looking for a bit of spring here in Georgia USA as well. Your house is lovely and it looks as if you are surrounding yourself with many wonderful things that will inspire you and allow your creativity to flourish. It may be only a ladle full off the top but it's always a delightful and interesting bit of soup you share and we are always left hungry for more.

Truly it is wonderful to reach into your hearth & home and see so much beauty and new life springing forth, new rhythms and rhymes, fresh inspiration and a settling into community in such a charming spot of the ancients. What wonderful twists & turns this life-journey takes us on...what blessings! Thank you Rima for sharing them with us!!warm hugs,abigail

Lol Hello girl !! I just knew there would be news of you this morning !! As usual this is full of bits & pieces I long to seize on and discuss with you at length !! Your house looks AMAZING !! Congratulations xxx

Lol Hello girl !! I just knew there would be news of you this morning !! As usual this is full of bits & pieces I long to seize on and discuss with you at length !! Your house looks AMAZING !! Congratulations xxx

How lovely to have such a long post to read from you. The feeling that creeps from the stones of an old building is really something to be savoured: I am so lucky with where I work, that feeling surrounds me all day.Happy nesting!

what an absolutely beautiful home you have there... and an absolutely wonderful post! welcome back to permanence, but this does not mean your journey is over .. far from it, it is a new journey about to begin. there is much so learn and to seek in permanence as well ... every journey takes the traveler to a different place and may you end in only the the most wonderful of destinations!

I'm very happy to see this post -- a charming and cosy home, gorgeous ramblings through hedgerows, two beautiful new paintings! Also, it's interesting to see the results of oil on cardboard... I've wondered about that. I wouldn't have imagined the lovely stained glass effect you got from it. Very nice.

dearest rima, it made me smile to read your words, to know that you are settling in your nest. Life is a strange path isn't it. Living in old wee cottages i often have the very same notions about the lives lived out in the very spaces i am filling & my over imaginative mind trips down little tracks following invented lives. Spring is indeed on the way and very soon i shall be in that making a new home place too, a scary, exciting adventure. your work is inapiring as ever, i do like the stained glass effect, beautiful. take care till next time x x x

Rima...That was absolutely beautiful. The house, lightshades are beautiful and so old worldly. I love the stained glass singing of the ship. It is an amazing piece, very soothing to see. I think it is an amazing painting, no one would ever think it was on cardboard. Look forward to the new adventures the house and village will bring you.

This is a blog to linger in. Everything that comes from you or is around you seems to be rich beyond measure. And I am in awe of the skill, energy, dedication which you have to bring this magic out for us to appreciate!

Hi Rima, so happy to see you settling in to your most wonderful and cosy home. Your work is amazing and I love your stained glass effect painting. And I'm so in love with the woodland lampshades and would really love to know how you made them. I want to make some too! I'll be thinking about you at your desk, creating your way through March and wishing you bright blessings for the future. ~Gina

What a beautiful post and thank you for sharing so much of yourself with us. As I was taken on your wandering with you it made me miss the UK and was a trip down memory lane. Thankfully I get to do a trip home this April (the first time in 2.5 years). Your place looks great and it seems that you've already turned it from a house into a home. Enjoy your new space and I look forward to more posts.

I'm glad you have found another beautiful home - I always dreamed of living in a really old house, but it never came about. I hope you are finding healing and happiness in your new surroundings in that lovely unspoilt countryside. Your lampshades are enchanting - the stained glass design is wonderful and I love the mad girl. Take good care of yourself and keep weaving your magic. This post has been a joy to read - so full of beauty and interest - thankyou for sharing it with us.

oh rima. so much to say! i'm afraid my comment will get lost amongst the crowd here, but i want to write this cold, sunny march morning and tell you how happy it has made me to read these uplifting words of yours, to see the wonderful photographs. i was always smitten by your vagabond life, by the house on wheels, by your living surrounded by nature...but now i am even more taken by your sweet, sturdy home, by the deep-set windows, the views of the meadow, the chain that you found and have hung from the rafter, those wonderful - WONDERFUL - lampshades that you've created from your outdoor treasures...the photos hung with care, your artwork new and old, the blue plaid bedcover, the hearth, the rugs. all of it. i want to come and sit with you and drink hot mugs of tea, i want to wander the fields along the stream and come back to your house to watch you transfer the memories onto paper or canvas with paintbrush in hand. one day i will, i can almost promise you that. it is SO good to see you beginning your new journey, so good to read the hope in your words. sending love - xo

Welcome home! I have been watching, waiting, worrying, wondering when you would return and am so pleased to see you back. Your home is beautiful and is beginning to show signs of you that we see on your site and in your work. Let the spring commence.

Rima, Like a mother hen, I checked each day to see through your blog.. is she OK? Thank you for letting us know you are settling in to a new space and safe to do what you need to do. the space is warm and magical and can spin some stories of its own -no doubt. Joan

So lovely to see you back here Rima, you've been missed as I'm sure you realise by now! I love your house and the way you've arranged things. I was looking at each picture avidly to recapture the dream I had about you a while ago. The rooms look very familiar and are as I imagined but where o where are the creatures I saw, the doll with large feet and the spider girl? ;O) ! ...Great to have you back!xx

I'm so glad that you are back, and with such beautiful pictures and prose. Your new home looks absolutely fantastic, a spiritual sister of my dream house. Thank you so much for this peek into your new world.

Rima, it was so good to see your post pop into my reader. I have missed you. I follow you avidly, more so since I met you once and bought a little piece of your work. I pray peace for you in your beautiful new surroundings.

Rima it is such a delight to share the wee journey around your home with its tender roots and leaves and twigs and warm glowing lampshades. Each corner has its own story and you have placed your belongings in a way which makes them seem as if they have always been there. I love reading your soulful tales and in this post, it seems that you write with such contentment. I do hope that you are feeling more happy and content and it is wonderful to see your new work - The mad girl is wonderful!Gillian

a slow weaving amble through this chapter in your life; what a peaceful and introspective read. i especially connected with the musings on the layers of lives who have shared your nowhome. timelines, residuals, crossing paths...these are things i ponder as well.

oh, rima... swoonable home... i can smell the wood fires and the mossiness you must bring with you from the outside...

on time... i think time is a spiral... at any point of the helix you are able to see both past and future and it is able to see you, too... and that's nothing compared to all the delicious invisibleness happening around that spiral... that is the web you speak of... all enmeshed, we can see and feel through it all...

what a delightful nest you've woven Rima - another way of looking at time is that of layers -- so I can imagine your decoration upon layers of old treasures ... bet they are humming with joy to be felt.

What a soothing entry. The tales you weave with the life you live. Thank you Rima and I wish you the best with your nesting. I dearly imagine I should find myself a nest too, what creative wonders may come of me then.

Vainemoinen's singing magic. Excellent. I had forgotten it was you that recommended the BBC 4 Kalevala podcast. I think it was that that set me on my current project about another singing character inspired by Vainemoinen. Also got me in the habit of searching for odd podcasts from Britain. Thanks for that. Speaking of podcasts, your posts would make very good podcasts.

Your mad girl appears to be birthing birds...a symbolism I hope carries you through the shaded changes in your world. Thank you for letting us strangers carry bits of you as well. I will be checking my local library for The Way of Wyrd tomorrow. Blessings to you.

Another very nice post. I, too, am fascinated with places and objects and the people whose lives they played some part in. One feel the connection to a place or thing, even when there is no obvious historical attachment.

Beloved RimaGlad you're back - it's wonderful to hear your voice again.Your new home looks lovely and warm. The lampshade you made is beautiful,exactly right for your magical home. And your words...always magical... suggest hope in your new path.With loveReginawww.toforatodentro.blogspot.com

So lovely to have you back, and such a treat to see your home. I too have been reading Finnish folklore, and heartily suggest you get a copy of "Tales From A Finnish Tupa." These are folks who believed--as I always have--in the magic of words, and that the utterance of them made anything possible, could create anything you wanted or needed. I think we all crave that kind of magic in our homes, and in our lives.

Good to hear from you again!With your posts being so few and far between it makes them all the more precious when they finally reach us.And it seems that you've now embarked on a new adventure by getting settled ... in a - new - home without wheels; quite a departure from your previous way of discovering the world!I hope you may feel happy in it, and keep telling us about the world in your very particular and enchanting way of looking at it.

ha! With 104 comments already, I dread you won't be able to read them all, but I'll take the risk! Spidersilk must have lead you to this wonderful house! I don't know, but the little I know from you by your virtual journal, makes me believe that you have found the perfect Rima house. It's so full of history and character, with loads of nooks an crannies to fill with Rima spidersilk, connecting you to more beauty and more tales...I wish you bunches of joy in that lovely, lovely house of yours...all bound with spidersilk!(ps: it's the spidersilk saga that inspired me to name my welsh corgi "Silke".)

Hey you are the best ever! I really thank God I've found you here! Your work makes me feel very good, you are like a piece of peace! heheLove your work and pictures! I rellay hope I can meet someday!From Brazil! Rob!

what a lovely home and countryside. Reminds me of southern Germany and pulls at my heart so....those lampshades my dear, brilliant! and your man singing and the bird girl--glad you're doing well and creating!! It's always such an inspriration to visit here.

Rima, it is so good to have you back with us. It figures that you would be ensconced in such a perfect house, in such a marvelous countryside. Thank you for showing it all. Your lampshades are wonderful. And thank you so much for introducing me to The Way of the Wyrd ... you have shown me a window to my past.

So good to hear from you again, love your photos and stories, enjoy the nesting. I read this lately and though I must share it with you:Trust transformation. Hard times are a natural part of life. Don't be afraid to change because of your experiences. Instead, let them shape and steer your course. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the new world you're in and take advantage of it. You bring to bear all your prior experience, but you're riding on another level. -- Nikki Giovanni

What a wonderful find your blog is! The photos of your house reminded me very much of an old Welsh farmhouse my folks used to rent for holidays when I was a boy, especially the steep angled staircase. Highly evocative: superb :-)

While I did not get a chance, as of yet, to express my sorrow over the rough roads your journeys have recently taken you, I want to do so now and add that I think you've created for yourself a most marvelous home in which to heal, and grow, and continue on. I first discovered your blog about the time that you were getting ready to set off in your house on wheels, and each subsequent visit has allowed me to see just how lovely that home was. It thrills me, for you, to see your transition to a different home happen in one that is already so full of love and life and you. While there is nothing I can say to alleviate your sorrow, other than to add my voice to the myriad others in saying that you are not alone, I will say that I look forward to continuing to share your adventures through this sight, and the lovely images, of nature and of your own creation, that you will continue to share with us.

What a lovely home. It really feels HOME, Rima. Not just HOUSE. There's a big difference. ;-)

I'm in the process of grieving HOME vs HOUSE the last few years. So I know how it feels to grieve that topic, in my own way.

And I'm one who would not have stayed half as sane if it hadn't been for the loveing web of internet friends who hold me.

I hope you are feeling better (you sound better) and that things continue to improve. I hope you let the web of love hold you safe. It really is a powerful gift.

((hug))

Your story here reminded me of a story I'd love to see you illustrate. Or at least I'd love to have you read it. Maybe one day, when you're bored... just pop over to my blog and let me know and I'll send you the link. It was published in the Witches Journal a few years back, but it's up online for free now.

Oh and I found your mini movie (Fish and doll) on YouTube recently and loved it. :-)

Oh, congratulations on your new stairs! :) Your posts are always an inspiration, and I am so glad you've found a suitable place to roost. Much, much luck in all that you do. It's good to see you back (since your last post) and exploring again!

So happy you are back. Missed your bloggings ever so much. Your home is cosy, beautiful, inspiring, peaceful. I think it needs a cat :D Look forward to seeing more of your wonderful work. Have a wonderful year in this your new space to create, live, ponder ...

Wow, what a beautiful home you have there. So magical and enchanting. Thats a really nice place to do your amazingly art-work. You are such an inspiration, such a talent. I wish you all the best in this life.Peace and MagicStina

Oh, I am so happy to see that you have surfaced. And it such a delightful snuggy place. You have deep windowsills for treasures to sit, and books, and stones, and the most wonderful staircase ever. A truly lovely place to shelter your current dreams. And such gorgeous nature outside your door. And of course, hot water straight from the tap can never be dismissed. If we were closer, Edward and I would show up for tea and a long walk. But as it is, I have thought of you often and wished for the best. So happy to hear from you again.

So utterly fascinating, walking through the woods and tumbleweed of your life. I loved that moment of sitting with the cows... yes, and walked and carried wood, and had sheep following me all the way, right with you - thankyou!

Thank you for the beautiful photos of your home and the land surrounding it. It is no mystery how your work comes to be so inspired! And you sharing that bit of your world with me has inspired me to want to make something new!

Hi Rima, I'm sure I've never seen a blog which received so many kind comments, and there must be a good reason for that... could it be that you are simply a magical spirit, and your profoundly luminous magic comes shining through everything you touch... and we web folk are drawn to that, along the silken threads you cast out into the world...

Dear Rima,It's months later, but I'm just now so moved and amazed by this post, especially "A girl mad as birds" and the Dylan Thomas poem that inspired it. I started to hear in my mind the song "Me and the Mad Girl" ... actually, even the whole album it came from, Robin Williamson's "A Glint at the Kindling." I hope you know this music already; it seems to truly live in this same beautiful world that you're working in. Thank you much for the inspiration and delight. ~ Lisa Ekström

In October 2010, I have been called back to your old post here on the need for nesting and stability. If not for your decision here, you would not have met Tom and given us the heart-singing words of September and October 2010. But the need for nesting, permanance, stability can also be at odds with love when love is afar. This is a painful truth that I have both known for years and have chosen to suppress. I will continue to bathe in the beauty of your September and October 2010 posts, and for this post only, will pretend that I don't hear you, searching for a way to choose both.

Found you today from Vainomoinen's picture on Etsy. He looked to me to be a ceramic tile rather than stained glass, but I'm a potter more than a glass person.

Wonderful image. I wanted to see more of what makes you tick, and I love what I found! You are truly an old soul, and it was time you put down roots. I love your descriptions of the house and its checking you out - it seems to have gracefully accepted you.

An old house in America is probably a hundred years younger than your new abode. Glad you knocked the wheels out from under yourself for a spell. I'll come back and read more of your thoughts and see more of your art, a lot of which disturbs me a bit, which you know!

About Me

Rima Staines is an artist using paint, wood, word, music, animation, clock-making, puppetry & story to attempt to build a gate through the hedge that grows along the boundary between this world & that. Her gate-building has been a lifelong pursuit, & she hopes to have perhaps propped aside even one spiked loop of bramble (leaving a chink just big enough for a mud-kneeling, trusting eye to glimpse the beauty there beyond), before she goes through herself.

Always stubborn about living the things that make her heart sing, Rima lives with her partner Tom and their young son in Hedgespoken - an offgrid home and travelling theatre built on a vintage Bedford RL truck.

Rima’s inspirations include the world & language of folktale; faces of people who pass her on the street; folk music & art of Old Europe & beyond; peasant & nomadic living; magics of every feather; wilderness & plant-lore; the margins of thought, experience, community & spirituality; & the beauty in otherness.

Crumbs fall from Rima’s threadbare coat pockets as she travels, & can be found collected here, where you may join the caravan.